The underside of joy by Sere Prince Halverson is a lovely story that works on so many levels. Ella finds her piece of paradise in the Redwood forest when she stops on a drive north in a small town and meets Joe. They set off fireworks right from the start. Joe’s wife has left him alone with their two adorable toddlers. Ella fits right into the family, she has always wanted children and she loves the little boy and girl fiercely. Joe calls her Ella Bella and makes her believe in forever. His sudden death shatters her joyful home. She realizes they never talked about the hard stuff; his failing business, the children’s biological mother, the sorry state of their finances. Their little Eden had secrets, now the subjects they avoided are coming home to roost.

The underside of joy begins on the first dawn of summer 1999, when Ella Beene, a happily married stepmother, gets a sleepy kiss goodbye from her husband Joe as he leaves to snap some photos on their local rocky coastline. It’s the last time she will ever see him.

In the wake of Joe’s accidental drowning, his two young children, Annie and Zach, cling to Ella. Their adoration is mutual: Ella is the only mother young Zach has ever known, and Annie retains only vague memories of their biological mother Paige, who Ella believed had abandoned her children not long after Zach’s birth. But then Paige arrives at Joe’s funeral to stake her claim and reestablish a relationship with her children. Suddenly, the definition of family takes on a whole new meaning and urgency to Ella.

The underside of joy is not a fairy-tale version of step-motherhood, pitting good against evil, but an exploration of a complex relationship between two women who both consider themselves to be the children’s mother. Their conflict uncovers a map of scars—both physical and emotional—to the families’ deeply buried tragedies, including Italian internment camps during World War II and post-partum psychosis.

The underside of joy begins as an indelible portrait of loss, then broadens into a moving and provocative consideration of the true meaning of family.